


pace e misericordia

by reconditarmonia



Series: Che nel pensier rinova la paura [3]
Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-25
Updated: 2013-03-25
Packaged: 2017-12-06 10:47:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/734808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reconditarmonia/pseuds/reconditarmonia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laertes, during and after "Che nel pensier" - waiting, and practicing, and planning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pace e misericordia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gileonnen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gileonnen/gifts).



Laertes is ready to take ship for England when Claudius receives the reply from Edmund. "Peace, Laertes," says the King, "he shall go to't soon enough." So he waits.

He keeps watch, strict and most observant; too awake to imagine ghosts there, too aware to think he is only imagining a voice in his head telling him _being in, bear't that the opposed may beware of thee_. And he keeps watch on Ophelia -- it is the most he can do when he wants to grab Claudius by the throat and force him to bring Hamlet back faster, to take his sister's hands gently in his own and lead her about the palace garden. He forms a strange almost-friendship with Horatio as they both watch and wait and hope for Hamlet to come back alive, and he trains perpetually to be ready for that day. 

Then, the sailors -- Laertes has been as it were in a superposition of states, knowing that Hamlet is dead, because Edmund has killed him, and knowing that Hamlet is alive, because Laertes _must kill him_ \-- not only unwilling but unable to admit the possibility that all his practice and wasted passion might be for naught, but it still does not come entirely as a shock to find out that Hamlet is dead, killed in battle with the French.

He is lost. He lost his chance when he let Claudius cool his anger and it _never will come again_ \-- that is not his fate. Denmark is a prison, a hell -- Horatio entreats him to stay, but he cannot breathe in the fug of secrets and lies and he longs for the open air of France. He thinks it will do Ophelia good, too, to leave behind her memories of madness, and so he writes a letter to Lamord to ask if there might be a place in Paris for him and his sister. It is never answered. 

Lamord must be dead, Laertes decides; when months have passed, and letters to Rouen, Le Havre, Paris have gone unanswered, he knows that the man he played in France is dead, because the man he played in France would have written back. It does not matter. Laertes will mourn him in France in his own time, when he has let go of his vengeance, when Ophelia is herself again -- when they have buried their father deeper than earth can, and he can do his duty by the other dead.

 _Pur 'Agnus Dei' eran le loro essordia;_  
 _una parola in tutte era e un modo,_  
 _sì che parea tra esse ogne concordia._  
\--Dante Alighieri, _Purgatorio_ , Canto XVI, 19-21

**Author's Note:**

> \--This has been sitting around for ages (the publication date is current because I just completed it, but I wrote most of it in March '09) and I hope it doesn't feel like the end was rushed.


End file.
